


The Vanguard of Our Destruction

by Anonymous



Series: Cosmological Constant [1]
Category: Mass Effect Trilogy
Genre: Alternate/Noncanonical Reaper Origins, And Eventually Wanders off the Trail, Definitely NOT Ruthless Shepard, Eventual FemShep/Garrus, Eventual FemShep/Garrus/Tali, Follows Canon for a While, No Starchild, No Synthesis Option, Paragon Shepard, Sole Survivor Shepard, Some Points of Major Canon Divergence, Some Points of Minor Canon Divergence, War Hero Shepard, spacer shepard
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-18
Updated: 2019-08-18
Packaged: 2020-08-23 08:54:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,550
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20240164
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: Spacer brat Jane became a hero during the Skyllian Blitz, a survivor on Akuze, and a force of defiant mercy on the moon of Torfan.ButCommander Shepardwasn't born until her boots hit the ground at Eden Prime.





	The Vanguard of Our Destruction

**Author's Note:**

> I. With this story, I'm consciously choosing to write smaller chapters as something of an experiment. I'm hoping to see whether occasional but substantial chapters or frequent but short chapters are a better way to keep my inspiration flowing and my output up; I'm fairly sure I favor the former, but I'm trying my hand at the latter here. (If I find myself seriously dissatisfied with the shorter chapter format, I'll reformat this into longer chapters once the story's finished, then continue the longer-chapter format with the sequel stories. I do not expect reformatting to be especially difficult for me or jarring for readers.)
> 
> II. There does not seem to be any canonical information on where Akuze is located, so I rather arbitrarily stuck it in the Gagarin system; similarly, I put Torfan in Arinlarkan. If anyone actually cares about ambiguous and mostly irrelevant details like this and can come up with a good argument for a different location for either Akuze and/or Torfan, I would be thrilled to hear what you've got to say!
> 
> III. The opening line is a quote from Sea Fever by John Masefield, which can be read in its entirety [here](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/54932/sea-fever-56d235e0d871e).

_I must go down to the seas again, for the call of the running tide is a wild call and a clear call that may not be denied._

In the old days, back before Prothean archives and mass effect fields and even the very idea of successful space travel, that was how people felt about the sea. Something about the unfathomable depths and the vast distance and the unpredictable danger was a siren song to sailors, and the navies of the world patrolled all seven oceans of the Earth and waged war from atop the waves.

But the sea didn't call to many people nowadays. There were sailors back on Earth, of course, and there was a long time in human history where the deep sea was a strong contender for the role of the final frontier. But the Mars archive changed everything back in 2148, and suddenly no one cared about ocean colonization. Outer space became the one and only final frontier left in the hearts and minds of humanity, and if the Systems Alliance Navy had anything to do with actual seafaring vessels anymore, Commander Jane Shepard didn't know a thing about it. The galaxy at large, with all those worlds and all that life beyond the mass relays, its unending and star-dotted blackness just as unfathomable and vast and dangerous as the oceans once had been, was what made the clear and wild call that mankind heard in 2183.

Modern sirens sang from distant stars.

Shepard herself had seen many of them. She had been born only eight years after humanity's discovery of mass effect fields, and she was among the first generation of "spacers", kids who were born not on Earth but FTL-capable spacecraft in systems other than Sol. She had been raised on starships and space stations, and she'd lived in more than a dozen different systems before she'd been old enough to follow in the footsteps of her mother and her long-absent father by joining the Alliance herself.

Since then, she'd been everywhere. Notably, she'd been on Elysium in the Vetus system back in 2176; on Akuze in Gagarin during 2177; on Torfan in Arinlarkan during 2178.

And it was those successes that brought her to Arcturus in 2183 for the shakedown run of the SSV Normandy.

The ship cut a swath through the empty darkness of space in perfect silence. In the hours since she'd been aboard, Shepard had already poked her nose into every nook and cranny of the ship she could find; the only noise to be found anywhere was at the drive core itself, and even it was a whisper compared to any vessel on which she'd served before.

She'd only been on this ship for less than a day, and there was a good chance she might not even serve on it for very long, but Shepard could tell that this ship was special. It was Alliance, and it was Anderson's, but it was turian, too. And on that note...

"The Arcturus Prime relay is in range. Initiating transmission sequence."

Shepard could hear Joker's voice on her comms as she stepped out of the elevator and marched past CIC.

Baby-faced and overeager Corporal Richard Jenkins--a Richie if she'd ever seen one--nodded at her as she passed by him. "Commander."

Shepard nodded back but didn't pay him much attention. The young ones were trouble. Desperate to prove themselves, especially if their shipmates were mostly comprised of superior officers, as was Jenkin's case.

Shepard found a certain solace in the fact that he should be perfectly safe on a shakedown run, at the very least. Between Torfan and Akuze, she'd lost more than enough soldiers to last a lifetime.

"We are connected," Joker went on. For someone with such a ridiculous nickname, he certainly sounded like he was taking his job seriously. "Calculating transit mass and destination. The relay is hot. Acquiring approach vector. All stations secure for transit."

Shepard stepped onto the bridge behind the pilot and copilot's chairs. Jeff Moreau, apparently more commonly known as Joker, had the helm; Lieutenant Kaiden Alenko sat in the second chair, and if he was doing anything to contribute to the Normandy's relay approach, he was certainly doing it much quieter than his counterpart.

But they weren't the only ones on the bridge. Shepard nodded at the hulking alien that stood, arms-crossed beside her, and realized a moment too late that he hadn't even glanced in her direction. The turian, Nihlus Kryik, was a striking figure. At least six-foot-five, possibly closer to seven feet tall, he certainly stood in stark contrast to his human companions. His thick red-brown skin--a fairly uncommon color for turians, as far as Shepard knew--was painted with white colony markings that covered his whole face like a mask. His eyes, sharp and beady like a bird of prey's, were a green so vibrant that they seemed to glow.

Ever since First Contact, there was bad blood between humans and turians. It was political, primarily, but it was also _primal_. Humans had a slur that they liked to trot out for turians they didn't like; they liked to spit the word "bird" at them, the unmistakable vitriol taking an innocuous word and turning it cruel, but comparing a turian to a bird was a gross understatement of what they were as a species.

Turians weren't _birds_, they were _raptors_. Unlike humans and salarians, turians hadn't evolved from especially intelligent prey species. Turians, like the krogan, were apex predators in their home environments, and they had the bodies to prove it; there was something vicious about turians, avian and reptilian and feline all at once, with razor-sharp fangs, inhuman eyes, and bodies built for the cheetah-like bursts of speed.

The sight of a turian would make evolutionary alarm bells go off in the back of any human's mind, First Contact War or no First Contact War.

Of course, fight or flight instinct wasn't _Shepard's_ first response to Nihlus's presence on the ship... but that wasn't important right now. Because at the moment, they were flying into the blinding white-blue light of the Arcturus Prime relay.

"Hitting the relay in 3... 2... 1..."

It was over in seconds. People even fifty years ago would never have been able to believe it; even now, there were much-derided conspiracy theorists back on Earth convinced that the relays were just an elaborate hoax meant to trick into believing... something. Shepard wasn't entirely clear on what the theorists believed the truth was, nor of the imagined motive for the supposed deception. She just took solace in known that it was nothing knew; back in the 20th and 21st, some people hadn't believed they'd really made it to Luna, either.

The world would always have weirdos. Shepard knew that _very_ well.

"Thrusters... check. Navigation... check. Internal emissions sink engaged. All systems online. Drift... just under 1500 K."

"1500 is good," Nihlus said, his arms still crossed. Beneath her translator microbe's parsing of his words, she could hear the distinct flanging effect that made turian voices stand out in a crowd, and her eyes flickered toward him for a moment. "Your captain will be pleased."

With that, he turned and left them. Shepard watched over her shoulder as he went.

Only after his footsteps had faded did Joker speak again. "I hate that guy."

Shepard's brows lifted, and Lieutenant Alenko turned toward Joker with a similarly skeptical expression. "Nihlus gave you a compliment... so you hate him?"

Joker shook his head. "You remember to zip up your jumpsuit on the way out of the bathroom? That's good. I just jumped us halfway across the galaxy and hit a target the size of a pinhead. So that's incredible! Besides, Spectres are trouble. I don't like having him on board. Call me paranoid."

"You're paranoid." Alenko didn't miss a beat; Shepard smothered a smile. "The Council helped fund this project. They have a right to send someone to keep an eye on their investment."

"Yeah," Joker said, his voice dripping with as much skepticism as his co-pilot wore on his face. "That's the official story. But only an idiot believes the official story."

Shepard had to admit it: he made a good point. "They don't send Spectres on shakedown runs." Or, if they did, they _shouldn't_.

"So there's more going on here than the captain's letting on."

Captain Anderson's voice broke in over the comms. "Joker! Status report."

"Just cleared the mass relay, Captain. Stealth systems engaged. Everything looks solid."

"Good," said Anderson. "Find a comm buoy and link us into the network. I want mission reports relayed back to Alliance brass before we reach Eden Prime."

"Aye aye, Captain." Then, in a slightly less professional tone, "Better brace yourself, sir. I think Nihlus is headed your way."

"He's already here, Lieutenant." Shepard winced. "Tell Commander Shepard to meet me in the comm room for a debriefing."

The comms fell silent.

Joker didn't even glance back. "You got that, Commander?"

"Great. You annoy him, and now I get to deal with it."

Joker made a deeply dismissive 'pff' sound. "The Captain always sounds like that when he's talking to me."

"I can't possibly imagine why."

Shepard laughed as she stalked off the bridge. "Play nicely, boys."


End file.
